“Let your food be your medicine,” Robby Wooding says, after chomping a handful of stinging nettles.

He offers me a hand full, but I decline. On the tastebuds, I think it would be a bit too prickly. But Wooding rolls the nettles up so they don’t sting. Strolling around the lush farmland that has belonged to his family for 200 years, he makes short cryptic comments.

“It’s highly nutritious,” he continues, “and good for making pesto.” And it is an alternative remedy for allergies.

The stinging nettles are just one of the medicinal herbs that Wooding has grown over 15 years ago for his herbal business. While the business is no longer going, the herbs are still thriving on Wooding’s farm, located down the road and across the Banister river from our place in Halifax County.  Goldenseal, a member of the buttercup family used to aid digestion, grows here in the field. Ginseng, panacea for all kinds of ills, may be found in the forest. Wooding won’t reveal the location of the ginseng, a plant that was prized as far back as 196 AD for its curative powers. He makes various tinctures and teas of herbs as his health demands.

Wooding has taken a roundabout route to come home here after trying to survive as an artist in New York City.

“I got out of here [HalIfax] as fast as I could,” after high school he says, as he relaxes in a chair in a country kitchen that looks like his great grandmother might pop in any minute with a tray of biscuits.  (She was born in an adjoining room.) In high school he loved abstract art and intent on making it as an artist, he went to Rutgers for a graduate degree.

In New York City for five years, he painted in between jobs in construction But he couldn’t break through the art market. He finally decided to come back to the old homeplace, where his family has successfully raised tobacco and other crops for the last century.

They made a decent income on tobacco before price supports were discontinued. The question was: what could replace tobacco as a money crop? Following his belief in the healing power of plants, Wooding decided to try raising medicinal herbs. “I was trying to get an alternative to tobacco. There was an ad in Progressive Farmer for ginseng,” he recalls. He bought 100,000 plants and sowed them in the forest to begin Southern Herbals.   For fifteen years, Wooding’s herbal business attracted a following from Charlottesville and the surrounding area. But the sales did not amount to a living wage; he went back to school to become a nurse.

He worked to keep the farm up, using some old tractors to bush-hog the land. He raised hay for feed but it was a huge undertaking to keep up. Then the farmer who was helping him out retired. He was about to give up, until my cousin told him about Merlin, the same Merlin who helped us to restore our farmland.  And then the magic occurred. At least, it seems like magic, when you look out at the lush fields, full of clover, butterflies and bees on a spring day, but in fact, Merlin and his three sons work hard to plow, plant and sell the organic agricultural produce.

With its authentic wood buildings, the farm looks as it did 100 years ago. Wooding does little painting or upkeep on the buildings that somehow still stand.

It’s taken a few years for this former tobacco farm, which was notorious for depleting the soil, to reach this pinnacle of fertility. For the past month, the farm has sported a rich crop cover of purple vetch, rye grass and red clover dense as an Oriental carpet laid across the rolling hills. Just this week, the cover crops were turned over into in a rich soil mix for soybeans. Next year, they will plant sunflowers, Wooding hopes, as part of the crop rotation, that keeps the fertility in the ground.

In other more formal gardens, the purple vetch and clover would be rooted out as weeds. But here they are nourishing the soil using regenerative methods without pesticides.

The little bit of pesticide used for the hay had wasted away after three years, the period required for organic designation. 

Wooding is grateful for the renovation of the land that has revived without chemicals or other additives. “I am so thankful. I was at the point of despair. Merlin came and drove around the fields.” He had a super tractor, compared to the old vehicle Wooding had used before.  There is the addition of lime and chicken poo, plus the cover crops. This year the crop will be soybeans to be marketed to organic producers.

What if you get an outbreak of insects, or overwhelming tall grasses, or other invaders? How can you avoid using pesticides?

“That’s simple,” says Wooding.  “Don’t do it!”

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